new life

My daughter had her baby on Saturday. A beautiful new life came to us and not without great fanfare. My daughter was quite uncomfortable at the end of her pregnancy as most women are, and we had wanted the baby to come early as it seemed the easiest way for Natalie to be comfortable again. I gave her a mudra to help bring on labor and as if on cue into labor she went. Everything about the delivery was as difficult as her pregnancy and I knew this new little girl had big things planned here on earth. Her arrival was anything but normal. In one brief moment it went from being a regular delivery to they both were in trouble, a mothers worse nightmare.

My daughters temperature was climbing with the intensity of her labor and the baby was not faring much better. Her heartbeat was erratic which indicated she may have had an infection or Natalie had one they couldn’t tell and the first round of antibiotics did nothing to slow the fever. Then the ob doctor finally arrives and I knew by the look on her face we weren’t in a happy space. She wanted to say something without saying it, “we could go on and keep trying to push”, the baby was just rocking back and forth and not making much progress towards her birth, “or, we could…” and there they were the words I didn’t want to hear, “we could do a c-section and get the baby out”.

Can there be a decision made after such a sentence, get the baby out, it was tense and in another moment I had to encourage my daughter to do the hardest thing, to give up and give it over, to God, to the doctors. I stayed with her to go through surgery as her husband was so overwhelmed I couldn’t imagine him having to do it. They made me wait outside of the operating room and I knew something was up, and there was. They had surrounded her so quickly I can barely remember it, just that sense of knowing something was wrong, I prayed a prayer that could be heard throughout all of eternity for my daughter who I had no idea was in distress unable to communicate her needs, I was far away from her on the other side of a door.

They had to put her to sleep, so uncool to see your daughter so far away from herself while her body was getting ready to have a baby, so uncool. And in a flash there she was, they pulled that baby out of her so fast. I saw them place the baby on Natalie and she never cried. They moved her and there she laid in her infant incubator so small, not crying, not feeling right, her feet and hands white, I was so lost for a moment in a sense away from myself because of the stress. My daughter didn’t get to see her baby born but I did, she didn’t get to be with her baby right after birth but I did, and then I prayed. I prayed such a prayer as I have never prayed before, everything scary had to stop, it had to stop, everything had to be ok, then it had to be fine, then it had to be better, I called upon on God, I called upon all that is in the creative universe to make it better, to fix it, my granddaughter and my daughter, just fix it, I said in my loudest sternest voice to the heavens. I put my hand on my little granddaughters little chest encouraging her and couldn’t even look over at my daughter who was still so far away from her body, so I looked at my granddaughter pushing my life force into her, then there she was, looking out her eyes, moving the blood through her body, there she was.

I had to leave the hospital soon after they brought the baby up for her father to see. I had hurt my back helping Natalie in labor, I was in pain and frankly I needed to cry, big fat tears of horror and joy. My daughter has gone through an incredible karmic journey to bring this girl to the earth for her new life but I get the sense from her this is certainly not her first…

And someday her mother and I will share this story with her. A story that speaks to the pain of being human, the pain of being born, and through this journey we learn it is indeed a good thing to be born, a good thing to be a human, and a great thing watching new life beginning again.